Remote control circuit breakers are commonly used for temporary interruption of electrical service during peak use hours and for programmable lighting control of industrial locations. By opening and closing on demand from a remote location, these circuit breakers provide a significant improvement over manually operated circuit breakers in terms of convenience.
Systems using remote control circuit breakers typically include a circuit breaker load-center having circuit breakers wired to a remotely located computer for monitoring and/or controlling each circuit breaker. The wiring has been accomplished in such systems either by using a patch-board within the load-center, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,920,476 (Brodsky et al.), or by hard-wiring each circuit breaker input/output to a terminal in the remotely located computer.
Such systems, unfortunately, are not very accommodating to system control changes. Rather, the systems are designed to handle specific types of remote control signals, typically provided by a pair of wires that may be shorted to command the circuit breaker to close. Each time the circuit breaker control requirements change in these systems, the wiring and many system components must be reconfigured or replaced, thereby making these systems expensive and burdensome to maintain.
Another maintenance-related problem with these types of systems concerns the ability to control and monitor the system. Most load-center systems fail to provide a conveniently arranged monitoring system for the various circuit breakers and/or fail to provide a convenient method of on-line circuit breaker programming.
There is therefore a need for a remotely controlled circuit breaker load-center which is easier and more convenient to monitor and operate.